On Wednesday afternoon, I saw a video on Twitter that spanned the newly renovated ground floor of the clubhouse at Saratoga Race Course, and my jaw dropped. I may have actually winced. I felt a little sick. I had seen photos of the new Jim Dandy Bar, relocated and expanded, and they didn’t elicit much…
If you’re above a certain age, you’ll remember that phrase as the iconic tagline in advertisements for Blackglama furs, a campaign that began in the late 1960s and ran for nearly 50 years, associating the fur company’s products with glamorous stars like Bette Davis, Rita Hayworth, Gisele Bundchen, and Janet Jackson. The idea was that…
“Bustin Stones in my opinion is the most underrated stallion in the country hands-down.” That was Jon Taisey’s response when asked to comment on the horses that Hibiscus Stables had bred by the stallion standing at Waldorf Farm. The executive vice president of sales and client relations for Hibiscus, Taisey and his partners Mike Oliveto…
Well, it’s been quite a few years since we’ve done one of these! And we’re late out of the gate, and a bit abbreviated for now, but I hope to get the full summer list posted sooner rather than later, and within the next day or two I’ll add upcoming dark day activities to this…
In 1867, the six-day summer meeting at Saratoga Race Course began on Aug. 7. The New York Times offered a glowing preview, praising the beauty of the women in attendance, the “unclouded brilliancy” of the sun, and the condition of the racing surface. That fourth season of racing in Saratoga, The Times claimed, “promises to…
This Friday at Saratoga Race Course will see the last of the 13 stakes races carded this summer for horses bred or sired in New York. Saratoga Showcase Day was added to the racing calendar in 2014 and scheduled for Travers weekend, increasing the visibility of the state’s breeding program on the biggest racing weekend…
Seven years ago, the New York State Gaming Commission undertook a daunting mission: to locate every New York-bred Thoroughbred that raced between 2010 and 2012 and didn’t race after 2012. A year later, in 2016, the Commission released its findings. The number of horses that fit the criteria was 3,894. The Commission was able to…
By most measures, Lee Einsidler lives an enviable life. The grandson of a man who ran a speakeasy during prohibition, he worked in his father’s liquor store, then rose to the top of the liquor distribution business, first as the CEO of Sidney Frank Importing Company, which created and launched Grey Goose vodka, and now…
Following the monumental success of the Fasig-Tipton select yearling sale earlier this week, a sale that saw gains in gross sales and in average and median sales price, and at which 14 horses sold for more than $1 million, a record for this sale, attention will now turn to the company’s sale of preferred New…
Paula Curtis-Carter stood in front of the dozens of people assembled at the Principessa Elena Society in Saratoga Springs on Thursday. She held aloft a cup containing a couple of fingers of Guinness, preparing to lead a toast to her husband Allan Carter, who died in April. Before spending 15 years as the historian at…
Brooklyn Backstretch 